Scalp acupuncture for children with cerebral palsy: A protocol for a systematic review

BACKGROUND: Cerebral palsy (CP) describes a group of permanent disorders of movement and posture causing activity limitations, leading the most common movement disorder to children. Scalp acupuncture (SA) is one of several specialized acupuncture techniques, and it has been used widely in China to alleviate several CP symptoms, despite the deficiency of high-quality evidence related to this practice. Therefore, we plan to conduct a protocol of systematic review aimed at systematically reviewing all the clinical evidence on the effectiveness of scalp acupuncture for treating CP in children. METHODS: The following electronic databases will be searched from inception to May 1, 2019 MEDLINE, PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (Cochrane Library), Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Chinese Scientific Journals Database (VIP), Wan-fang Database, and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM). All published English and Chinese articles randomized controlled trials (RTCs) will be included. All types of CP of children in the trials will be included in this study and these individuals will be involved as core searchers to evaluate the efficacy of scalp acupuncture. Rev Man V.5.3 software will be implemented for the assessment of bias risk, data synthesis, subgroup analysis, and meta-analyses if inclusion conditions are met. Continuous outcomes will be presented as mean difference (MD) or standard mean difference (SMD), while dichotomous data will be expressed as a relative risk. RESULTS: The systematic review will synthesize the available knowledge surrounding scalp acupuncture for children with CP. The findings will be synthesized to determine the efficacy and safety of scalp acupuncture for children with CP. CONCLUSION: This protocol will present the evidence of whether scalp acupuncture is an effective intervention for children with CP.